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 The divorce rate in the United Kingdom is around 50 percent, and most of these marriages will end with the children being disrupted. Children are often manipulated and used by the parents to hurt the other party and this can be damaging for the children as well as the parents.
Many fathers are unaware of the rights they have for visitation of their child and do not educate themselves about child custody. Most feel they are only entitled to visit their children every other weekend and perhaps a few weeks in the summer holidays.
This can cause a lot of resentment for the father as they feel they are missing out on their children growing up. Fathers are often relied upon to pay child support but are often not rewarded with visits from their children.
Courts generally would find that the mother was the primary caregiver and would award primary custody to her. Now it appears the court system is beginning to change and is going to focus more on what is best for the children rather than automatically preferring the mother to be the primary caregiver.
Younger children should have regular contact with both parents but with older children it is acceptable for them to go a longer time between visiting both parents. It’s important to understand that when parents make the initial custody agreement that it is something that can change over time because the needs of the children will be changing as they grow.
It is important to create an environment that your children will feel safe in, and one they are comfortable growing up in. It is essential that both parents have a role in the raising of their children and if you are going to court to decide who gets custody then having this environment is going to benefit your case greatly.
 A link has been discovered during recent research between climate change and children contracting ear infections. Children are now developing more Otitis Media, or ear infections, during the winter months of December/January, which is two months later than has been recorded for the past 2 decades. An analysis of trends dating back to 2000 have been revealed by the General Practice Research Database has suggested a link to global warming.
Researchers are also warning that GP’s could now face more pressure as they have to treat more cases than ever during what is already one of the busiest periods of the year for those who work in the health service. Two scientists have been funded by Deafness Research UK to investigate the trends in this common ailment, suing a database of the GP consultations which took place during the 2000′s.
Both these, and figures collated from other countries, have shown that consultations regarding ear infections have gradually declined over the years. The condition is invariably more common during the winter and this must be taken into account when looking at possible changes over the years.
Whilst the researches didn’t expect to see the winter peak displaced, but found that the typical sharp rise that took place in October/November was now coming 2 months later. The annual decline was also shown to be the steepest during the months of autumn.
One possible explanation is the warmer autumns in recent years preventing seasonal viruses (which cause colds and trigger OM) from getting established as early as previously. The importance of temperature in month-to-month variation suggests that this is indeed a major factor.
Glue ear, which is a major consequence of OM, is the retention of fluid in the middle ear for some weeks after an ear infection. It causes hearing loss that often changes children’s communication and behaviour. Its annual cycle is a month or more delayed with respect to that for OM. The researchers found the glue ear peak occurred progressively later in recent years, just like the cycle for the primary infection, OM.
“It is known that overall global warming has been slower recently, but the autumn rise in ear infection consultations in the UK has still been happening later and later,” said Professor Mark Haggard, Deafness Research UK Chairman and a Senior Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge.
“We have used controls for as many of the known factors as possible and we find a close link to the actual month-to-month temperatures within the years studied. So we have to consider that the overall change in pattern is partly due to changing aspects of climate, particularly the milder autumns of recent years. Some respiratory viruses are temperature-sensitive.”
Professor Haggard has been analysing the data with Dr Ian Williamson of the Department of General Practice at Southampton University who, as a practising GP, has a strong interest in the implications of the data for UK GPs. “The timing and nature of advice to GPs and parents may have to reflect these changing patterns,” added Dr Williamson. “In those children who do get glue ear following an ear infection, more of this will now occur in December/January rather than November. This is a period when there are other pressures on families and overall demand on the health service has built up. Nevertheless it is still necessary to look out for children who miss sounds and appear not to be paying attention, or are being less cooperative than usual, as these are the signs of glue ear.”
Vivienne Michael, Chief Executive of Deafness Research UK, said: “Glue ear remains a problem among young children and this latest research could prove useful in helping GPs and others in the health service to recognise where the peaks and troughs are now likely to be. Then they can provide the necessary cover.”
For further information on deafness and deafness-related conditions call freephone 0808 808 2222 or visit Deafness Research UK’s website at www.deafnessresearch.org.uk
If you are about to embark on your first family holiday then you may have a number of stresses on your mind right now. Fear not as with some forward planning you will be able to have the holiday of a lifetime and relax while enjoying the sunshine with your family.
Travelling can be stressful at the best of times but by staying calm and relaxed you will be able to reassure your children that everything is fine and that what you are experience, be it on plane, train or in an auto mobile is perfectly normal. With some of these handy tips below you will be able to concentrate on enjoying your stay rather than worrying about what ifs and buts.
Things to do before you set off:
Check your departure and arrival times.
Before you head off to bed the night before just ensure that you have double checked the times that you will be travelling. This allows you to know when you will need to leave and also tell individual members of the family when they are expected to be out of bed and ready by.
Take care when packaging your baggage.
Be sure that you know the luggage weight restrictions when packing and weigh your suitcase to make sure you are not over the limit before you leave. Think about necessary items and do not pack liquids of more than 100ml in your hand luggage. You are allowed to take baby formula and sterilised water but this must be specifically milk designed for babies only (including breast, soya, cows and formula).
Think about the travel needs of your children.
If you are going to be travelling with young children then considering taking a light pushchair or pram to ensure that they do not slow you down when travelling through the airport. You will be able to board the plane with your stroller but will need to advise of this at check-in to get the necessary luggage tag. If you are going to be travelling with a car chair, travel cot or other ‘non essential’ item then you may find yourself facing additional charges for oversized baggage. This can be quite costly so it is always worth checking if you can use a travel cot or other needed piece of equipment when you arrive at your hotel rather than taking it with you.
Things to do while at the airport:
Keep the children amused. Airports can seem like fascinating places and there are usually so many ways to spend your funds, shopping, arcades, rides, water fountains and other things too so bringing your own entertainment or even playing some word games be a great way to keep the children entertained. The more you tire them out hopefully the longer they will sleep for either on the plane or once you arrive at your destination.
While flying:
Bring out some handheld games consoles, books, magazines or colouring books to keep your children entertained. You can pack these items in your hand luggage and ensure that any electrical devices are charged up before you leave home to ensure that the children are entertained for as long as possible. A window seat is a fantastic way to keep your children entertained, particularly on a clear day.
Flights & travelling can be quite boring, for anyone, let alone children, so by simply ensuring that you are prepared as much as possible you can hopefully minimise the time spent stressing and enjoy more of your holiday.
Article courtesy of Netflights
 A shakeup of health services in Tyne and Wear is going to mean that young people get top priority care. Inpatient services are going to be removed at Gateshead and South Tyneside hospitals for children and instead hubs are going to be created at the Great North Children’s Hospital and the Sunderland Royal Hospital.
This means more children from outside of the city are going to get access to care from the city’s facilities, but Geoff Lawson, paediatric consultant has said that the primary responsibility will still be with children in Sunderland.
Dr Lawson commented, “My first priority will always be taking care of the children in Sunderland. This reorganisation is just going to mean we can take care of more patients as well, this is not going to mean the care of current patients changes in any way.”
Dr Lawson also highlighted that this is not a new decision and it is something that has been in planning for over 15 years. He continued, “I am well aware that the government is cutting back on spending but this is not a finance-based decision. We think this is the right way to move forward and we have thought so for a long time.”
The GP commissioning board for the area have said that they are keen to see more services being provided to patients through primary care rather than having to refer them to secondary care, such as that received in hospital. This benefits are both to the health service as well as children who have to spend less time in hospital.
According to a recent survey, 25% of children under the age of ten consider themselves to be overweight. The survey was commissioned by the television programme ‘Dying to be thin-Tonight’ aired on ITV1. The survey, that was carried out amongst 1500 people aged between 7-18 has also revealed that 28% had been bullied due to their weight, 26% skipped meals to lose weight and 40% of those under ten were worrying about their weight.
Lucie Russell is the director of campaigns, policy and participation for YoungMinds, and she said that it is vital that we don’t dismiss these statistics and act as responsible adults to help these children to feel better about themselves.
She added that today’s children are growing up within a harsh environment and are under constant pressure to conform to the latest trends in looking and acting a certain way, and we must, as a society, look at the pressure we are putting these youngsters under.
“Children feeling insecure about their bodies need to be are helped to feel positive about who they are and what they look like. At an early stage it can start with not feeling positive about your self-image and crash diets but this can soon turn into much more complex eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia which can scar for life
“Much more needs to be done both at school and at home to offer children positive role models of all shapes and sizes. We need to help children to feel good about their own body image and should become an important part of their school and home life.”
‘Dying to be thin: Tonight’ will be aired tonight (5th January 2012) at 7.30pm on ITV1. The poll was carried out by online polling companies Onepoll and Youngpoll.
 The future of a highly controversial genetic technique that aims to stop serious conditions being passed from mothers onto their babies will be partially decided by public opinion. The technique replaces genetic material in the egg that is defective to eliminate the rare mitochondria diseases. Ministers, after consultations looking into 3 parent IVF, will decide whether it can become openly available to patients and allow them to have healthy babies.
A centre at Newcastle University, funded by the Wellcome Trust to the tune of £5.8m will be investigating the safety of the technique. Mitochondria is found inside almost all human cells, and provides the energy they need to function properly. As with the cells nucleus, they contain DNA, but only in tiny quantities.
Around 1 in 5000 babies are born with inherited defects present in their mitochondria DNA, and depending on which cells are affected, the results can be extremely severe, and even fatal in some cases. Scientists now believe that they have found a way of substituting the defective mitochondria which, hopefully, prevent the baby from developing a disease.
The way they do this is by taking 2 eggs; one from the mother and the second one from a donor. The nucleus is then removed from the donor egg, leaving the mitochondria and the other contents intact, and that is replaced with the nucleus from the mothers egg. The resulting embryo now has properly functioning mitochondria, courtesy of the donor, and should, theoretically, develop healthily.
This technique has been likened to replacing a battery, and as there in no impact on the DNA no other factors will be altered, such as appearance. Although the child would have an extremely limited genetic contribution from its ’3rd parent’, there is strong opposition from certain groups, who have said that there are major risks attached to such genetic manipulation.
A change in the current laws would be needed before this technique could be offered to patients. David Willetts is the minister for universities and science and he said, after announcing the consultations, that scientists have made a discovery into the prevention of mitochondria diseases that is both important and potentially life saving.
He added, however, that as with all cutting edge scientific discoveries, it was vial that the public’s views were taken into consideration before they considered any changes in the law that would allow it to be used. It is hoped that this consultation will be completed by the end of 2012.
The Wellcome Trust’s Sir Mark Walport has said that this technique could prevent the transferrence of diseases that were previously incurable. He added that they welcomed the chance to discuss with the public why they believe that this technique is vital in order to give those families who are affected by these diseases the opportunity to have healthy children, a thing that most of us simply take for granted.
 Doctors believe that IVF treatments may be more successful for older women if their eggs are spliced with the eggs of a woman that is younger.
In fact, scientists believe that splicing and combining the eggs may double the chance of pregnancy from IVF, due to the fact the younger women’s eggs help to counteract the damage to eggs due to age.
On the other hand, critics of the process consider that babies born from this type of treatment have two different mothers which is not a natural process.
In any IVF treatments things that can decrease the chances of success, damage to the nucleus, the jelly like cytoplasm that surrounds the egg, or damage to the area where the DNA is stored.
According to the New Scientist reports, Atsushi Tanaka has attempted to splice 31 eggs out of which 25 cases were successful.
Out of these eggs, seven of the eggs started to develop into embryos when injected with sperm, which is a little over double the traditional rate.
Since the DNA is held in the nucleus the baby would still look like the male and female parents, but technically it would have two mothers and fertility laws in the UK do not allow babies to have three parents.
Reproductive Ethics member Josephine Quintavalle said that nature has been great at taking care of human reproduction and the idea that science feels they can make the process better is ridiculous.
 Many food companies such as Cadbury, Kelloggs, Rowntree, and more have set up their websites to be filled with cartoon characters, free games, and videos in an attempt to lure children onto their websites where they can advertise to them. In addition, these retailers also use their Twitter and Facebook accounts to lure children into their websites and to see their products. This has caused controversy from many charity groups who claim that the companies should not be able to market children junk food online when they are not allowed to so during children’s television programming.
Ministers have already drawn controversy on the subject by allowing many food companies that produce junk food to sit on committees that have the sole intent on deciding public health regulations which has led many doctors to protest. According to television regulations, TV adverts that portray foods high in sugar, salt, or fat cannot be shown during kids’ television programming, however online the same rules do not apply.
Now the Children’s Food Campaign and the British Heart Foundation are asking for online regulations to be tightened stating that the companies are using techniques to lure children into their websties that they cannot perceive as advertising. The report stated that companies are using regulatory gaps to their favour in order to reach children outside of the television format and that online marketing is more valuable allowing them to create a lifestyle image that promotes poor nutritional diet habits to children. Therefore, children are still getting the same messages that legislation has been created to protect them from.
Websites that have been targeted for criticism include Kellog’s Krave cereal, Chupa Chups, Rowntree, Nesquik, Capri-Sun, Cadbury Buttons and more. Over three quarters of those websites offer high salt, fat, or sugar food items that have pages on Twitter or Facebook. Given the fact that children can like a product and then the like is displayed to their friends Facebook is especially concerning to the charities who are worried that peer pressure will lead kids into thinking that the unhealthy foods are popular and trendy choices.
Researchers that took part in the report chose to sign up and receive emails from Sugar Puffs in order to see what children have access to. Those who sign up are only asked to verify they are over 16, which a child can easily do by clicking yes to gaining access to the information contained within.
On the Cadbury Buttons website there is an animated character that can actually be made to look like a child by changing the features and name of the child. The website asks adults to verify their age by entering a birthday, but once again a child could just pick one of the options at will.
This trend is the same for many of the websites in the study prompting concerns from researchers who stated that children can easily access the marketing of the websites without any real knowledge that they are being influenced to think one way or another about the junk food items. Researchers claim that this no doubt makes marketers happy since they must be aware that they are protected, but that children are still accessing their websites and seeing their products on full display.
The recent poll that was undertaken by the Independent Taskforce for Student Finance Information has revealed that 59% of the respondents have said that they have little or no understanding as you how the new fee systems are going to work. This could, according to Perspective, the Midlands based pioneering company of student tracking sytems have a massive and detrimental affect on student numbers.
As the recent demonstrations have shown, both existing and prospective students are deeply unhappy about the sharp rise in tuition fees. This is a situation that already is, to some extent, bound to the lower university applications, but complete confusion over how the system actually works is set to cause more damage.
As well as this, another survey revealed that 55% of respondents have said that going to university is now less, or much less, attractive thanks to the new system for tuition fees.
Paul Davis, managing director of student management system provider, Perspective, commented: “The rise in tuition fees has already clearly riled a large percentage of young people; no doubt leading some being put off from applying to university. This further lack of understanding could quite easily lead to even more looking elsewhere to further their education.”
Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert, who is chair of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information, commented on the matter saying: “The communication of tuition fees by all parties over the last few years is a national scandal. They’ve left us as a nation ill-equipped and uneducated about how this crucial and very different form of finance works. We need to start a war on this ignorance – after all, if students don’t understand the true cost, how can they decide if it’s worth it?”
Paul continued: “Although it’s a little while yet before the new fees systems starts, this really needs to be resolved sooner rather than later before any lasting, and avoidable damage is done.”
Perspective is a provider of learning management software with its Collaborative Learning Manager product utilised by over 60 local authorities and, Sunesis implemented by companies and training providers around the UK. For more information visit www.perspective-uk.com.
 Asthma is a disease that affects the lungs by narrowing the airways and this can mean that the passage of air into the lungs is restricted. Of all the long-term diseases, it is the most common that affects children but there are ways that it can be controlled and these can lead your child to have a normal and active life just like those children who do not suffer from asthma.
If your child is suffering from asthma then it is wise to make sure that you know the potential causes of asthma attacks. There are many triggers that can be found inside the home and some of the most common include dust mites, pets, mold and second-hand smoke. There are also some foods that can contribute to the likelihood of having an attack.
If you think your home is free of dust mites because you can’t see them you should think again as they are not visible to the human eye. They are microscopic creatures that thrive on things such as pillows, bedding, carpets and stuffed toys.
Generally, these are items that are found in the rooms of children so if your child spends a lot of time inside then it is wise to make sure that everything is washed regularly so that the dust mites are killed. If your child is suffering from severe asthma then it might be a good idea to invest in technology for filtering dust out of the air.
Mould is also something that can be present in the home that can be easily eradicated. Generally you will find mould in moist areas such as in bath materials and on a shower curtain.
This can generally be removed with soap and water and you can prevent it coming back by making sure that your bathroom is well ventilated. Opening the windows is a good step but you can also install an exhaust fan to draw moist air out of the bathroom.
Secondhand smoke can be harmful for anyone but it is particularly dangerous for people to smoke around asthmatic children. If someone in your home as a smoker make sure they do it outside and don’t allow anyone to smoke in your house. If you are out in public make sure that you keep your child away from smoky places, something that has become easier since the introduction of the smoking ban.
Unfortunately, in many cities are pollution is rather common and it can be one of the main triggers for an asthma attack. This type of pollution can include that emitted by vehicles as well as from factories. If you can, try and avoid bringing up your child in an area of high air pollution, if you must spend time outdoors in a polluted environment then insist your child wears a mask to prevent an attack.
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The divorce rate in the United Kingdom is around 50 percent, and most of these marriages will end with the children being disrupted. Children are often manipulated and used by the parents to hurt the other party and this can be damaging for the children as well as the parents.
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